Marx

G. J. Mattey

Winter, 2008 / Philosophy 151

Philosophy 151 Marx

Hegel’s Followers

A number of early followers of Hegel are known as the“young Hegelians.”The leaders of the group included Bruno Bauer and DavidStrauss.In their youth, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, and FriedrichEngels were associates.The young Hegelians were “leftist” radical opponents ofdespotic governments upheld by religious institutions.A counter-movement was that of the conservative “right”Hegelians.The right Hegelians held the power in the universities andkept the left Hegelians out.They considered Hegel’s work to be the culmination ofphilosophy and existing institutions to be the culmination ofsociety.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The German Critique of Religion

In Hegel’s system, the figure of Jesus represents the unityof the universal and the particular in a single individual.Rationalist scholars claimed that Jesus was only aninspirational figure.Schleiermacher held that the role of Jesus was tointroduce a “God-consciousness” to humanity.Strauss maintained that the unity of God and man is to befound not in the single individual Jesus, but in the life of thehuman species.In The Essence of Christianity (1841), the youngFeuerbach argued that God is the projection of humanpowers onto a fictitious objective being.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Feuerbach’s Critique of Religion

Human beings are in essence conscious beings.A being can be conscious only if its way of being (its“species”) is an object of its thought.The notions that humans have of themselves are identicalto their notions of God.Initially, this fact is hidden, and the self-notion of humanityis sought in another being.This accounts for the anthropomorphic attributes assignedto God, as well as for the parade of spiritual beings suchas devils, goblins, witches, ghosts, and angels.The exaltation of God implies a degradation of humanbeings.Religious progress is made when humans reclaim forthemselves the properties they had projected onto God.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach”

In 1888, Engels appended to one of his works a series ofeleven theses on Feuerbach written by Marx in 1845.Feuerbach called the piece “the brilliant germ of a newworld view.”Marx credited Feuerbach for recognizing that religiousbelief has a secular origin.But Feuerbach did not recognize that the separation of thereligious from the secular is based on “contradiction” in thesecular basis.The contradiction in secular society reveals the need forrevolutionary action to resolve it, which would do away withany need for religion.“The philosophers have only interpreted the world invarious ways; the point is, to change it” (Thesis 11).

Philosophy 151 Marx

Marx’s “Economic and Political Manuscripts”

In 1844, Marx wrote three unpublished papers that are nowknown as the “Economic and Political Manuscripts.”These manuscripts, along with others written during thesame period, are now known as the writings of the “youngMarx” and are said to express Marx’s “humanism.”The first two manuscripts are entitled “Alienated Labor,”and “Private Property and Communism.”The third of the manuscripts was a “Critique of HegelianDialectic and Philosophy in General.”This manuscript contains two elements:

An exposition and criticism of Hegel’s dialectical method,particularly as used in the Phenomenology of Spirit and theLogic.The relation of the dialectical method to the modernphilosophy, primarily that of Feuerbach, that is critical ofHegel.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Fate of Hegel’s Dialectic

The early critics of Hegel were not critical of the dialecticalmethod and remained entrapped in it.

Some of their expressions “not only verbally agree with theHegelian perspective but reproduce it literally.”

Later, Feuerbach “destroyed the inner principle of the olddialectic and philosophy.”But the early critics, though proclaiming their superiorityover Hegel, still did not come to grips with Hegel’s dialectic,or with Feuerbach’s.Feuerbach achieved three great things.

Proved that philosophy has served religion and as suchmust be condemned for alienating man from himself.Made interpersonal relations the basis of philosophy,rendering it materialistic and scientific.Opposed the Hegelian “negation of the negation” in favor ofworking out from the certainty of the senses.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Feuerbach’s Critique of Hegel’s Dialectic

Feuerbach explained Hegel’s dialectic, and hence clearedthe way for positive philosophy.Hegel’s dialectic contains three moves.

Hegel begins with the universal, infinite, abstract (in popularterms, traditional religion).He then transcends this alienated other and posits theparticular, finite, perceptible.But the posited particular, finite, perceptible is itselftranscended, and the universal, infinite, abstract isre-established (in popular terms, religion is re-established).

Hegel thought that only the negation of the negation is thepositive.But Feuerbach saw the negation of the negation to be amere contradiction.

The last step is the re-affirmation of the first step, whichitself is in opposition to the second step.

As a result, the last step is not proved, because the secondstep has not been truly overcome.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Price of Absolute Knowledge

Marx notes that Hegel’s system begins with logic and endswith absolute knowledge.Absolute knowledge is the knowledge of a super-human,abstract mind knowing itself.This knowledge is that of the philosopher, and it concernsonly the mind itself, excluding nature and actual humanbeings.Nature is something external to abstractly thinking mind.When mind finds itself in absolute knowledge, what it findsis a merely logical existence, rather than the existence ofactual human beings living in the natural world.This can be seen in the Phenomenology, whereconsciousness is opposed only to an abstractly conceivedother, and not real alienation.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Correct Use of Dialectic

Although Hegel’s use of the dialectic was defective, thedialectical method itself is necessary for the understandingof human existence.

“All the elements of criticism are implicit in [thePhenomenology ], already prepared and elaborated in amanner far surpassing the Hegelian standpoint.”

Even though oppositions such as that of master andservant are conceived abstractly by Hegel, they are realrelations through which humans are alienated from oneanother.Hegel prepared the ground for understanding humannature.

The self-development of man is a process.In the processes, man loses himself as a species-being inhis alienation from his fellow man.Man overcomes this alienation through collective work,which uses man’s species-powers.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Absolute Knowledge

The Phenomenology describes the ways in whichconsciousness appears.Since it presents abstract forms of consciousness, itpresents only the way in which actual alienation appears.It culminates in “absolute knowledge,” in whichself-consciousness overcomes its alienation andrecognizes its “other” as itself.The alien “other” is itself merely a way in whichself-consciousness thinks an other, and as such it is amere thought-entity.Thus, in describing absolute knowledge, Hegel can claimto have incorporated all the thought-entities of the previousphilosophers into his absolute self-knower.But his results apply only to the mental labor of thephilosopher, and not to the labor of those whose object isthe extra-mental world.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Things and Thinghood

Self-consciousness is said to “externalize” itself insofar asit thinks of something as other than itself.The externalized “other” can be called a “thing.”But from the standpoint of phenomenology, there is only“thinghood,” or the thing as an object of consciousness.Thinghood is “a mere artifice established by selfconsciousness,” which can easily overcome its “otherness.”The obvious description of what is “other” toself-consciousness (which Marx identifies with man) is“real, natural objects.”A human being interacts with objects because the humanbeing is a natural object just like the objects it works upon.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Naturalism

Marx adopts the standpoint of naturalism, which hedistinguishes from idealism and materialism.

Not idealistic because views thought as a product of nature,rather than nature as a product of thought.Not materialistic, because natural objects are objects forone another, rather than being independent entities.

Man as a natural being interacts with other natural beingsin two ways.

As an active being with vital powers that are capable oftransforming other natural objects.As a passive being that suffers the activity of other naturalobjects.

Man is a special kind of natural object who takes himselfas an object, and hence is a species-being.The natural history of the species-being man consists ofthe transformations he undergoes in developing himself asspecies-being.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Hegel’s Transformations

Hegel recognizes transformation, such as the followingascending series of social forms.

Private right.Morality.The family.Civil society.The state.World history.

But these are only ideal, and not real, transformations.The thought of private right become the thought of morality.

The thought-entities are confused with the real thing.So it is wrongly believed that actual transformations havebeen achieved.And it is believed by those who conform to thesethought-entities that their way of living has been justified.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Real Transformations

A positive feature of Hegel’s dialectic is his (abstract)recognition of transcendence of alienation and theconsequent creation of new ways of thinking and acting.Marx recognized two kinds of transcendence as beingactual developments.

Religion is transcended by atheism, giving rise totheoretical humanism.Private property is transcended by communism, giving riseto practical humanism.

The negative moments, atheism and communism, arequite real.The new ways of thinking and acting are not simply returnsto the original ways, which are really abolished.Theoretical and practical humanism are consistent withatheism and communism, but not with religion and privateproperty.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Hegel’s Inversion

The end-product of Hegel’s dialectic is absolute spirit.Natural man is only a predicte or symbol of the concealedabsolute spirit.

The relation of man as predicate to absolute spirit assubject is an inversion of the actual relation.Pure forms of thought are predicates, and actual livinghumans are subjects.The relation between thought and nature is likewiseinverted.In an utterly arbitrary way, Hegel’s “absolute idea” is said to“decide” to let an other (nature) proceed from itself.This transition can be explained only by the boredom ofthought having only itself as its content.But what is said to be known in this way is abstract nature,or nature as it is merely for thought, and “nature as nature”is nothing.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The German Ideology

In 1846, Marx and Engels published The GermanIdeology.

Volume I was a critique of modern German philosophy inthe person of the “Young Hegelians” Feuerbach, Bauer andStirner.Volume II criticized German socialist movements of thetime.

The point of departure of the “young heroes” was “theputrescence of the absolute spirit.”This gave rise to various new philosophical possibilities,which were trumpted for their dangerous and revolutionarycharacter.However, far from being revolutionaries, these philosophersmerely reflected the values of the German middle class.The wretched social conditions in Germany were in no wayimproved as the result of their writings.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Ideology

Ideology consists in systems of ideas that humans haveproduced from their consciousness alone.

Morality.Religion.Metaphysics.

The starting point of ideology is in the conception of what ahuman being is.This conception is supposed to be independent of thematerial conditions of human beings.Those material conditions are then supposed to beexplained through this conception.Ideology’s view of the human inverts reality.Ideology’s conception of man is itself a product of thematerial conditions of the human being.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Ideology and the Young Hegelians

The critics of Hegel did not escape his ideologicalstandpoint.Each merely emphasized one side of Hegel’s system atthe expense of another side of it.Whereas Hegel claimed that when something is reduced toa logical category it is understood, the Young Hegelianscriticized things by claiming them to be religious in nature.Thus, they held that the problems of mankind are due tothe influence of religious ideas on human life.Since the ideas are the products of consciousness,changes in reality could be brought about by changes inconsciousness.But all that results from the change in consciousness is there-interpretation of reality.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Philosophy without Ideology

The correct starting-point of philosophy is the real activitiesof real human beings in real material conditions.There are two kinds of conditions.

Pre-existing natural conditions (physical organization ofhumans and their relation to nature).Conditions produced by human activity.

The ability to produce the means of their own subsistenceis the basis of human development.This ability distinguishes us from animals.The manner in which people produce their means ofsubsistence determines their mode of life.Thus, the nature of individuals is dependent on thematerial conditions which determine the way in which theyproduce what they do.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Production and the Division of Labor

There are three factors whose development is broughtabout by the productive activity of human beings.

Development of productive forces.Division of labor.Social relations among people.

The way these factors are developed determines theinternal structure of a nation.Every new productive force brings about a new division oflabor.So, the way in which labor is divided is the measure of theproductive force of a nation, and hence of its structure.The division of labor are forms of ownership of thematerial, instruments and products of labor.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Early Types of Ownership

The initial phase of ownership is tribal, where the means ofsubsistence are hunting, gathering and agriculture

The division of labor is only a natural extension of thedivision of labor in a family.

The second phase is ownership occurs when cities arisefrom the unification of tribes.There is communal ownership, but with private propertybeginning to exist.As private property becomes more widespread, communalownership decays.There develop antagonisms between town and country,and within the town, between industry and commerce.There is also fully established the class relation betweencitizens and slaves.

Philosophy 151 Marx

A Case Study

The thesis here is that the forms of ownership determinethe internal structure of a nation.It might be thought that the structure of nations isdetermined violently through conquest.

Rome was conquered by the barbarians.In fact, a nation becomes ripe for conquest as aconsequence of the way its labor is divided.

For the barbarians, war was a form of life, and withpopulation expansion, there was a drive for more land.In Italy, land was concentrated in a few hands, and theplebeian class between the landowners and slaves was amere proletarian rabble.

These concentration of wealth and elimination of themiddle class were to be repeated in modern industrializednations.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Feudal System

The barbarian invasions had thinned out the populationand reduced the means of production, which in turn gaverise to new ways of life.In the countryside, there is a hierarchical class of nobilityruling communally over serfs.In the towns, there are small craftsmen with limited capitalwith apprentices working under them.There was no division of labor of any importance.It was necessary that the towns and land-holdings beunited into feudal kingdoms.Due to the hierarchical organization of the nobility, the formof government was monarchy.This and the other two forms of organization are explainedby considering the real activities of real people in realmaterial conditions.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Alienated Labor

The first of the three “Economic and PhilosophicManuscripts of 1844” is and unfinshed paper entitled“Alienated Labor.”The thesis of the manuscript is that “private property” is theconsequence of “externalized labor.”The starting-point of the investigation are thepresuppositions of political economy (the study ofproduction in the context of the state).The primary fact is that society is divided into proprietorsand workers without property.The misery of the workers is proportional to theirproductivity.These facts must be explained, but political economy is notable to provide an explanation through its categories ofgreed and competition.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Fruit of Labor

Labor produces commodities, but it also produces itself asa commodity.In the production of commodities, the greater the volume ofproduction, the cheaper the product becomes.Analogously, the greater the productivity of the worker, thelesser the value of the worker becomes.There are three relations in which the worker stands to theproduct.

Realization: labor produces a product.Objectification: the efforts of the worker are embodied in anobject.Appropriation: the object is converted from its natural stateand placed into human service.

These relations will be the basis of the explanations oflabor given in the manuscript.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Alienation of Labor

Political economy shows that the apparently positiveoutcome of labor in fact diminishes to the worker.The more products are realized, the more the worker isdriven toward starvation.The production of objects leads to the loss of objects, andeven of work itself, by the worker.The appropriation of objects does not benefit the worker,but on the contrary makes the worker a slave to the object,and ultimately to the capital that pays for his labor.In this way, the labor of the worker produces an object thatis alien and external to the worker.The labor of the worker is thus “alienated.”

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Externalization of the Worker

The product of the labor of the worker is related to him asan alien object.The more the worker labors, the greater the power of thealien object.As a consequence, the inner world of the worker becomesproportionally impoverished.This is the same phenomenon as in the case of religion, aswas pointed out by Feuerbach (who is not cited here).

“The more man attributes to God, the less he retains inhimself.”

The life of the worker has become externalized in hisproduct.The object itself exists externally to him as a hostile, alien,independent power.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Labor and Nature

Nature, the sensuous material world, supplies objects forlabor and also provides the means of the physicalsubsistence of the worker.By appropriating the external world through his labor, theworker deprives himself of both.

The raw materials of nature are used up in being convertedto objects.The depleted nature is less capable of supporting physicalsubsistence.

The worker becomes slave to the objects on which helabors.

The object is necessary in order for the worker to havelabor at all.By providing labor to the worker, the object provides to theworker his means of subsistence.

As nature becomes depleted, the condition of the workerbecomes worse.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Source of the Worker’s Plight

Political economy reveals the inverse relation between therichness of the products of labor and the poverty of the lifeof the worker.

For example, the more objects that are produced by theworker, the less the worker has to consume.

But by taking the point of view of the wealthy, politicaleconomy does not recognize the basis of these inversionsin the relation between the worker and the objects ofproduction.But the relation to the objects of labor is not the only factorin alienation or externalization.There is also externalization in the process of production.The externalization in the object is a by-product of theexternalization in the process of production.

Philosophy 151 Marx

How the Worker’s Labor is Externalized

One cause of the alien, external character of the labor ofthe worker is that the work is not part of his nature.

The worker would rather be at home tending to his ownconcerns.

Thus, the labor of the worker is coerced, forced labor.It does not satisfy the needs of the worker, but only theneeds of others.If it is not necessary for the worker’s subsistence, it isavoided like the plague.

In forced labor, the person acts for the benefit of anotherperson, just as when one is possessed by religious feeling.The worker feels that he is acting freely only whenattending to animal functions such as eating, drinking, andprocreating, or at most, tending to his home and wardrobe.As opposed to the alienation of the object, the alienation ofworking is self-alienation.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Reversal of Man’s Species-Being

In part, the life of an individual is the life of the species.The whole of nature is the inorganic body of man, thearena of his free activity.

It is the direct means whereby life is possible.It is the “matter, object, and instrument of his life activity.”

The conscious life-activity of man is the species-being ofman.In making over nature, man finds himself in it.But in alienated labor, the relation is reversed, andlife-activity becomes only a means for man’s existence.In this way, man is alienated from his own nature asspecies-being.The alienation of man from his species-being is “realizedand expressed” by the alienation of one person fromanother.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Alien Power

If the labor of the worker is an alien and forced activity, it isfor the benefit of beings other than the worker himself.Perhaps in ancient societies labor was directed towardtheir gods, but gods alone are not those who enslave theworkers.Work is not in the service of nature, since nature istransformed through work in a way which would seem tobenefit the worker.The only remaining candidate is men other than theworker.

The torment of the worker results in the enjoyment of thealien master.

The alienation of the worker’s activity then is due to the factthat it is performed in the service of someone else.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Private Property

In alienated labor, the object produced by the worker is nothis own, but rather is owned by the lord of labor.The relation of the worker to labor produces the relation ofthe lord of labor (the capitalist) to labor.The relation of the objects that are is produced by theworker to the lord of labor is that of being private property.Although it appears to be the cause, private property israther the consequence of externalized labor.

Analogously, God is not the creator of minds, but is insteadthe creation of minds.

Private property is the product of externalized labor.But it is also the means by which labor is externalized, orthe realization of the externalization of labor.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Wages and Private Property

Private property seems to be in conflict with labor, aconflict decided by Proudhon in favor of labor.But the conflict is really between alienated labor andprivate property.If higher wages were required, the result would not be theenhanced freedom and dignity of the worker, but only ahigher slave-wage.Proudhon advocated equality of wages as the way toeliminate private property in favor of labor.But wages are a product of alienated labor, and nomanipulation of wages eliminates the alienation, and so nomanipulation of wages abolishes private property.The emancipation of workers from private property wouldbe the emancipation of human servitude in general.

Philosophy 151 Marx

An Unfinished Project

The concept of private property has emerged from theanalysis of the concept of alienated labor.The other concepts of political economy can be developedfrom the concepts of private property and alienated labor.

Barter.Competition.Capital.Money.

This development is not carried out in the manuscript,which ends abruptly in the course of giving a generaldescription of the nature of private property.Another unfinished piece of business is to show how ithappens that the labor of man becomes externalized.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Private Property and Communism

The second essay in the 1844 manuscripts is entitled“Private Property and Communism.”In the essay “Alienated Labor,” Marx had noted thepossibility of emancipating workers through the abolition ofprivate property.Emancipation would resolve the “contradiction” betweenlabor and capital, which is embodied in private property.The contradiction is “a dynamic relation driving towardresolution.”The outcome of the emancipation would be communism.The present essay describes the various forms ofcommunism and how communism is related to humannature and society.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Overcoming Private Property

Some other political economists grasped incompletely theneed to overcome the contradiction between labor andcapital.

Proudhon stated that capitalism is to be overcome “assuch.”Fourier (a “physiocrat” who held that land is the ultimatesource of wealth) held that agricultural labor sets anexample for other forms.Saint-Simon, holding that the essence of labor is industriallabor, sought the improvement of working conditions.

Communism is the only means of overcoming privateproperty.Communism can exist in various forms.

A crude, immediate form, in which private property is madepublic property.An intermediate form, which is still influenced by privateproperty.A developed form, in which private property is overcome.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Crude Communism

Crude communism is the universalization of privateproperty.It would abolish anything, such as talent, that could notbecome public.Everyone would be in the position of the laborer.The basis for this leveling is envy of what the capitalistpossesses.This envy is really a disguised form of the greed of thecapitalist.The leveling activity of crude communism is not anappropriation of the objects of labor.It would result in the undoing of all the effects of labor andwould return man to a poor and unnaturally simple state.

Philosophy 151 Marx

A Test of the Outcome of Crude Communism

Crude communism fails as a way of overcoming alienation.This can be seen by analogy with the relation betweenman and woman.The relation of marriage is like that between capitalist (thehusband) and the laborer (the wife).In crude communism, private property is outlawed, and sothe women would then be shared by all the men (asdescribed in Plato’s Republic).This degraded state cannot be a model for how humansshould behave as a species.If the style of relation of man to women cannot begeneralized to all of society, then the system that supportsthis style of relation does not embody the way humansshould relate to one another.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Completed Communism

Marx describes an intermediate phase of communism inwhich understands itself as trying to overcome alienation,but without a grasp of the essential role of private property.The final phase of communism finally succeeds inovercoming private property.This kind of communism restores man as a social being,and hence as a human being.It resolves all conflicts between nature and man, andbetween men.

As such, it is completed naturalism and completedhumanism.

It also truly resolves all other conflicts, including thosebetween:

Existence and essence.Objectification and self-affirmation.Freedom and necessity.Individual and species.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Communism and History

Completed communism, both in its existence and in itscomprehension of its existence, is the outcome of theentire movement of history.Uncompleted forms of communism looks to history forinstances of opposition to private property.It then uses the historical existence of these economies toconfirm the adequacy of its attempt to overcome privateproperty.This attempt at validation cannot be successful.The fact that there are many other ways of dealing withprivate property is evidence that no historical economy isthe essential way of overcoming private property.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Overcoming Alienation

In a completed communist society, private property isovercome, and with it is overcome all forms of humanalienation.The immediate sensuous form of private property ismaterial property.But there are other forms of production that result inalienation.

Religion.Family.State.Law.Morality.

Insofar as these are overcome, man leads a social, humanexistence.Overcoming any one of these forms (e.g., religion byatheism) is not sufficient for communism, which overcomesalienation universally.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Social Activity

Once private property is overcome, genuine socialinteractions become possible.The object of human activity becomes one’s existence forall other humans.Because human nature is a social nature, human beingsfor the first time realize their essence in this environment.The social activity of man can take place in different ways.

Communally.When working in private (as in theoretical or scientificwork).

The material condition for theoretical work is a languagethat is common to society.My own existence is social activity, and I am conscious ofthis, so that all my creations are for the benefit of society.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Generic Life

Like Hegel, Marx asserts that thinking and being aredifferent, yet at the same time are a unity.The distinction is between one’s consciousness that thinksthrough general representations and one’s active social life.We can call the activity of the “general consciousness” anactivity of a generic life.Thinking through general consciousness has as its objectthe social life of man.But “society” is not some abstraction which is distinct fromthe individuals standing in social relations.The particular thinker thinks the totality of social relations.The particular person acts an an expression of the totalityof life.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Emancipation of the Senses

When private property exists, the relation between theperson and the object is one of possessing or having.With the abolition of private property, objects are“appropriated,” in the sense that they are made to satisfysocial ends.Previously, human capacities viewed objects only aspossible possessions.

Thinking.Sensing.Acting.

With their new orientation toward objects, humans relate tothem in a social way.

I see an object as satisfying a social need.

There is even the development of “social organs,” or “ahuman sense.”

Philosophy 151 Marx

Theory and Practice

A society that is “fully constituted” will produce “the rich,deep, and entirely sensitive man as its enduring actuality.The practical activities of this society allow the resolution oftheoretical antitheses.

Subjectism and objectivism.Spiritualism and materialism.Activity and passivity.

Marx does not tell us how these oppositions are onlyovercome, but only that they cannot be overcometheoretically.More generally, the essential powers of human beings arediscovered only in the history of human labor.But psychology abstracts from this history by subsuming itall under the concept “common need.”

Philosophy 151 Marx

Natural Science

The significance of current natural science is that it is thebasis for the technological developments that makeindustrialization possible.Given that we understand human psychology through thestudy of the history of industry, natural science is relevantto the study of man.Natural science begins with sense-perception, asFeuerbach has noted.The objects of sense-perception are natural objects.The powers of man are developed only through work uponnatural objects, and so the powers of man are properobjects of natural science.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Self-Creation of Social Man

Social man is a product of his own activities, which makeup world-history.Thus, social man is self-created.The question of where the process ultimately begandepends on a theoretical abstraction and makes no sense.The self-creation of social man makes him self-sufficient.There is no need for an alien creator, such as God.Atheism negates God, but socialism need not do so, sinceit begins positively with sense-perception of man andnature.Communism negates the negation of private property andso is a starting-point for the establishment of truly humansociety.

Philosophy 151 Marx

“Manifesto of the Communist Party”

The “Manifesto of the Communist Party” (also known asthe “Communist Manifesto”) was written in 1848 as theoutcome of an assembly of communists from variousnationalities.Its goal is to debunk the claim that communism is “aspectre [that] is haunting Europe.”Many diverse forces have united in an alliance to stop thespread of communism.The label “communist” is used to discredit opposingparties.This establishes that communism is acknowledged as apower.It also calls for a response on the part of communists.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Social Stratification

Recent historical research has shown that societies in theera before written history were communistic in structure.Since that time, societies have become differentiated intosocial classes, which are naturally antagonistic to oneanother.

Patrician, knights, plebeians, slaves in ancient Rome.Lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices,serfs in the Middle Ages.

The result of the class-struggles has been either thetransformation of society or the ruin of the warring classes.From the ruins of feudal society has sprung modernbourgeoise society.The stratification of classes has been simplified into twolayers:

Bourgeoisie (capitalists, owners of means of socialproduction).Proletariat (laborers who sell their labor in order to live).

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Emergence of the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat

The bourgeoisie has its origins in the early cities of themiddle ages.With the discovery of new lands, commerce developed,and with it developed giant industries, owned by industrialmillionaires.The increasing wealth of the bourgeoisie wasaccompanied by the collapsing of all working people into asingle class—the proletariat.The source of these developments were transformations inmodes of production and exchange of goods.The bourgeoisie have come to political power in themodern representative state.

“The executive of the modern state is but a committee formanaging the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.“

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Revolutionary Role of the Bourgeoisie

The bourseoisie has brought about more change in societythan any other social class in history.It has replaced all previous social relations with a bond ofcash-payment in the service of naked self-interest.It has replaced the various forms of freedom of individualswith the single freedom of trade.In order to achieve its unprecedented success, thebourgeoisie must continually revolutionize the modes ofproduction.It must also expand its reach until it becomes global andoverturns all local modes of production.Moreover, it replaces the “old wants” of every society with“new wants” which can be met only with imported goods.Even the intellectual sphere has become globalized, withthe creation of a world literature.

Philosophy 151 Marx

Seeds of the Destruction of the Bourgeoisie

Through its destruction of feudal society, the bourgeoisiehas unleashed the most powerful productive forces inhistory.Yet this very success contains within it the seeds of thedestruction of the capitalist system.The problem is that the system is unable to control itsproductive output, resulting in massive over-production.Over-production gives rise to economic crises, whichthreaten the existence of the system itself.Attempts to cope with the crises, such as opening newmarkets, only create the conditions for larger crises downthe road.“The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalismto the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.”

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Proletariat

The means of the destruction of the capitalist system isone of its essential components: the proletariat.The increase in productive power is proportional to thedevelopment of laborers who are a commodity, and thuswhose value fluxuates with the market.Their wages and working conditions decrease as theirproductivity rises.As commodities, proletarians are interchangeable, so thatdifferences in age and gender are no longer of anyimportance.Those in the middle class (small businessmen, peasants,etc.) are gradually forced into the proletariat.

Their small capital cannot compete with large capital.Their specialized skills are not needed because theirproducts can be mass-produced.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Revolt of the Proletariat

The conditions of the proletariat are intolerable, whichleads to various forms of revolt against the bourgeoisie.Intitially, they consisted in the destruction of the physicalcomponents of industry.When the size and homogenization of the proletariat issufficiently great, they band together to form trade-unions,concerned with such issues as wages.The improvement in communications allows large-scalecentralization, which in turn leads to greater political power.The proletariat are aided by the bourgeoisie, who empowerthem to help in their own struggle against its enemies.

At first, the aristocracy.Later, other bourgeoisie who stand in the way of industrialprogress.Always, the bourgeoisie of foreign countries.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Proletariat and Other Social Classes

Some members of the bourgeoisie fall into the proletariat,victims of industrial progress.Others, particularly those who understand the socialdynamics at work, voluntarily join the bourgeoisie.Only the proletariat is the revolutionary class.

The middle class is reactionary, in that its fight to preserveitself is a fight to preserve a pre-industrial way of life.The lower class that lives beyond the rule of law and society(Lumpenproletariat) may take part in a proletarianrevolution, but are more likely to be co-opted into theservice of the bourgeoisie.

The proletariat lacks property and finds traditionalinstitutions of law, morality, and religion as bourgeoisprejudices that work in the interests of the bourgeoisie.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Victory of the Proletariat

Because the proletariat has nothing to lose, it canovercome its situation only by the abolition of thebourgeoisie.It is in a position to do so because the proletariatcomprises the vast majority of people.Any mass uprising of the proletariat would crush anythingin its path.Because the proletariat necessarily becomesimpoverished in proportion to the wealth of thebourgeoisie, the latter are unfit to rule.The inherent flaw of the capitalist system is that itovercomes the isolation of laborer and drives them intorevolutionary association.The bourgeoisie digs its own grave, for it necessarilyunleashes forces that will inevitably overthrow it.

Philosophy 151 Marx

The Program of the Communist Party

Although the program of the Communist Party must beadapted to local condition, there are some items for actionthat should apply generally to advanced countries,including the following.

Abolition of private ownership of land.A heavily progressive income tax.Abolition of right of inheritance.Centralization of credit in a monopolistic state bank.State ownership of the means of communication andtransport.The expansion of state-owned industry and promotion ofgrowth in agriculture.Obliging everyone equally to work.Merging agriculture and industry, and re-distributing thepoplulation more equally.Free education and the abolition of child-labor.

Philosophy 151 Marx

How to Bring About the Revolution

Every local or national force that opposes the existingsocial and political order should be supported by theCommunists.In so doing, they should bring to the consciousness of theirallies that the fundamental problem is private property.The most important venue for revolution is Germany.

Its proletariat is more developed than in the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries.The bourgeoisie itself is in the midst of a revolution againstthe remnants of the old feudal order.The bourgeois revolution will be followed by a proletarianrevolution.

The Communist Party freely admits that its “ends can beattained only by a violent overthrow of all existing socialconditions.”The working people of the world should unite in revolution,because all they have to lose is their chains.

Philosophy 151 Marx